Disclaimer: Toonami is copyright Cartoon Network, and certain personalities are copyright Rooster Teeth.

Author's Note: One more thing, though it's kind of late: if you're imagining the characters' voices while reading, the TOM in this story did not have the same voice actor as the last two TOMs, or Tomino. That was Steven Blum, the actor who's most popular role is Spike Spiegel in "Cowboy Bebop". The short, pot-bellied, bubble-headed TOM (featured in Swarm) was voiced by the actor who did Krillin (Dragonball Z), Maes Hughes (Fullmetal Alchemist) and Lupin III: Sonny Strait. Though at this point in the story, he seems to think he's Bruce Willis.

Swarm

chapter 0.4: appetite for destruction

Gideon Alpha-12 Automaton Construction Platform.

TOM was sprinting down corridors as fast as his short legs could move him, which was unfortunately only about five times faster than a penguin and not much more dignified. Clearly, his model was not built for speed. Approaching a four-way intersection, he muttered, "I should have found something by now! I know I'm in the right place."

By his reckoning, the semi-circular construction chamber took up half of this level on Alpha-12. The testing grounds took up one quarter of the same level, leaving the section that he was now in the process of exploring. He had entered the same door he'd first seen LARS come through, so there should be something around here built to get people to upper and lower levels. He came to a stop, just then remembering a massive cargo elevator he'd seen back in the construction chamber. At the time it hadn't been important enough to take note of, and by now it would take too long to run all the way back to it. Man, this sucks.

"Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, running, running, running ..."

A desperate voice drew his attention to the end of a corridor, where one of the green automatons from earlier was running by. "Hey, wait!" he shouted. The green halted and tottered back into the middle of the corridor where TOM could see him. "What are you—"

"I am a robot!" the green answered too quickly.

"Um, yeah ... But what the heck are you doing out here?"

"Okay, here is how everything happened," the started to explain, enunciating carefully and using very simple words. "First, I got really scared by the crane. Then, I got even more scared by the monsters. So I ran away and tried to hide, but then I got lost somehow, and later I got chased by one of the really scary monsters, and then—"

"Wait!" TOM interrupted. "The Galacti-Leech ... uh, things ... they're inside?"

"Yes. But not to worry!" the green assured him. "I was extremely clever and managed to out-smart it. And now IT is lost, AND no longer chasing me."

"Okay, this's bad news, but—hey, look out!"

"Huh?" The green turned in confusion just as the aforementioned ray's teeth clamped down on his body, lifting him off his feet. It cracked his casing, shattered his visor, and sent sparks shooting from all his joints. Tendrils of energy slithered over his damaged hide and into the ray's mouth. The last thing TOM heard from the automaton before he was carried out of sight was a scream: "Ahhhh! I am dead!"

There was no time to lament in any way, especially not for a disaster that was taking place all around him. That fact was reestablished when another Nebula Ray smashed in through the wall behind where the green had just been standing. Picking a direction at random, TOM took off, but not before the ray had ascertained him as prey. He was lucky, though: the corridor he had randomly chosen led directly to the elevator he'd been seeking. Pouring on speed, which wasn't very much, he reached the elevator and hit the access panel, then spun around to face the far-off intruder. "Sorry buddy, but if you want dinner, you gotta catch it!"

He stared the ray down, waiting patiently for his escape route to become available. But after the ray had closed the distance between them by half, it occurred to him that the doors were taking a little too long to respond. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that they were still closed. He looked back at the approaching predator, which was closing in with its dead-looking eyes focused on him and its gaping mouth waiting to be filled.

"Ah, crap."

RUBY continued watching the Gideon Alpha space station even after she could no longer tell which port her escape shuttle had launched from. The dusty, desolate planet remained a vast background while the sation continued to shrink. Incidentally, RUBY's attention was drawn to the planet. She wasn't sure why until it occurred to her that it's surface had changed a little since she'd last seen it. The sparse gasses in the atmosphere had expanded into a much thicker, fully-formed mist. And there was something else happening down there that she hadn't put her finger on just yet ...

One of the green automatons was standing next to her. He placed a compassionate hand on her shoulder, saying, "Don't you worry about what that Administrator fella said about being pink. You're clearly a light-ish red! Trust me, I can tell."

She ignored him, peering intensely at her discovery. If she wasn't mistaken, the planet's mist was also developing a strange phosphorescent glow ... She shoved the companionable green's hand away, exclaiming, "Contact Alpha-12!"

"Why? It was made pretty darn clear that they don't want us around there."

"I think I know why the Nebula Rays are attacking! There's some kind of chemical reaction in the planet's atmosphere, and the rays are coming to feed on it, or absorb it, or whatever they do. But since the station's in the way, they're feeding on the energy in robots and machines, too!"

"Meh ... that's just a theory," the lazy automaton said, folding his hands behind his head and propping his feet up. "Besides, it sounds like too much work just to save a big facility whose whole reason for existing is long, boring manual labor. We're already being carried to safety, so I say kick back and enjoy the—"

The ray came out of nowhere, ramming the side of their craft with a force that surprised everyone. RUBY clung to the porthole rim, watching the giant space colony tilt and fall out of view. Desperately, she shoved past the automaton and the VIK unit and ran for the control station. But just as she reached it, an overwhelming spectacle froze her on the spot.

Beyond the front window, the entire starscape was crowded with nearly as many luminous cozmozoans as twinkling dots. A humongous wave of Nebula Rays numbering in the thousands was sweeping inexorably toward the planet, as well as the facility in orbit and the dozens of fleeing shuttles that were in its path.

I don't have time to lose my cool. She shook herself out of it and reached for the communication controls, but was flung away from them when another ray smashed into their shuttle from outside. It tore through the front, ripping the floor and ceiling in half like a knife cutting open a walnut shell. A crack appeared in RUBY's visor, and one of her legs was wrenched at an awkward angle. All she could discern through her damaged optic systems were robots being pitched about, sparks flying, and the bulk of the ray. Soon, all of these visuals fell away and opened up into a wildly oscillating view of the stars.

"Its probably just coming from another floor," TOM reassured himself, hoping the elevator doors would open before the approaching Nebula Ray could catch its easy dinner. After a few seconds, he lost his cool and began hitting the access panel as rapidly as he could.

Glancing back to see how much time he had left, he found his vision completely engulfed by a gaping orifice filled with sharp, metal-cracking teeth. He let out a shout of alarm and ducked, letting the ray swoop over his head to crash violently into the stubborn elevator doors, which gave an absurdly cheerful dinging sound and slid open.

TOM mashed the "up" button the moment he was inside. The doors closed on the creature just as it made another rush, and with a solid, metallic CLANG, it bent them inward. Relieved, he wiped some imaginary sweat from his brow and leaned against the back wall to observe the oddly distorted doors. They were imprinted with the shape of the ray's head like something out of a cartoon.

"Hey, there's my wall-mounted trophy! Now if only there were someone here to be impressed by it." Sustaining his humor, he glanced to either side of him. But in doing so, he noticed something strange: he was nowhere near the elevator's rear wall. Instead, he was leaning against something big that was inside with him. Cautiously turning around to see what it was, he had to tilt his head back to see a massive, and rather familiar, metal chassis.

The silent and motionless VIK demolition unit filled half the space inside the elevator car, lighting the darkness with his glowering red optic visor, which glared imperiously down at TOM. For his part, TOM discovered that he felt more threatened by the towering VIK than he had in front of the mindless Nebula Ray. With obvious intent, VIK drew back his fist as far as it would go (allowing for the substantial dent his elbow made) and swung at his puny opponent like a pile-driver.

VIK's opening punch glanced off TOM's head. It sent the automaton sprawling and left the demolition droid's fist embedded smack the middle of the Nebula Ray face that had been indented in the doors. VIK struggled to free his immobilized arm, his powerful servos whining and humming. Giving up, he rotated his massive form to seek out his target, and quickly found it. The smaller robot rolled underneath the demolition unit, avoiding a blow that smashed a hole through the floor.

"Terrific! First I gotta get INTO the elevator, now I have to get OUT of it again," TOM grumbled. "I wish somebody up there would just make up their freakin' mind!"

Meanwhile, down in the corridor, TOM's Nebula Ray was beating against the barrier that was keeping it from its food. The said barrier was already severely damaged, so it only took a few more hits until there was room for the ray to fit its wings through. Slipping over the threshold, it surged into the shaft and crashed against the opposite side, breaking through power couplings and reflexively absorbing every source of energy its cells could soak up.

It was at that moment TOM felt the elevator car shudder. Not from VIK's rampage, but from breakage taking place below. Then three things happened at once: the doors parted, VIK freed his fist, and the lift lost all power. It dropped straight down, drawn by the station's artificial gravity.

TOM made a dive for the opening and rolled to a stop outside. With one arm still stuck through the floor and the other reaching out for his smaller victim, VIK dropped downward along with the elevator. His optic visor flashed a furious red before he plunged out of sight.

A moment passed while TOM sat staring at the half-inch of space between his heels and the edge of the abruptly empty shaft. "Okay ..." he uttered, pushing himself up, "... moving on. I wonder how long it's going to take me now to find the communi—" He stopped, seeing the communications room right behind him. "Oh, good. Things finally got easy. Hope it stays that way ..."

All but a few of the occupants from RUBY's broken ship had poured out into empty space and where now floating around helplessly. An egg-shaped robot with six arms and a single locomotive appendage gave a horrible scream while being ripped in half by two Nebula Rays. As the feasting cozmozoans pulled him apart, a third darted through the carnage for RUBY, who'd been watching in horror. She was clutching the edge of the wrecked shuttle like a worm on a hook. Although its eyes were so dark and lifeless that it didn't even seem to see her, its mouth was agape in anticipation of a crunchy, energy-filled robot hide.

But just as it reached her, a metal fist grabbed the edge of the ruptured wall she was clinging to. She looked up, startled. From her point of view, she saw a tall cylindrical body emerge from behind the wall, and another powerful fist emerge from behind that body. The VIK unit's fist smashed into the ray's face, blowing it into bits of luminescent matter.

"Wow ... VIK, um ... thanks." She was almost too surprised to voice her very sincere relief.

VIK acknowledged her with a mere flash of indicator lights. Unfortunately, he was in the same position as she was now: clinging by one hand to a piece of floating wreckage. Him being a demolition unit, she could tell he had an unbreakable grip. The catch was that the metal itself wasn't holding up very well, and the lengthwise spin of the broken craft was twisting their grip. But while struggling to keep from drifting away, RUBY spotted some good fortune. Beyond VIK's straining fingers, at the far end of the vessel's shredded husk, its control panel was still in one piece and alive with power.

"VIK ... toss me up front!"

Following orders was the easiest thing for VIK to do. He grabbed her whole torso like a volleyball and gently pitched her forward. The vessel's rotation threw his aim off a little, but RUBY grabbed some loose cables and pulled herself over to the console. Swinging around at the tip of the shuttle gave her a nerve-wracking sensation of vertigo. It was worse this time with the swarm being much closer while turning over sickeningly in her vision due to the shuttle's spin. In addition to that, she was now out in the open.

Positioning herself, she tuned in to Alpha-12's main frequency, noting fretfully that the console was partially damaged. "Hello, Gideon Alpha-12! Can anyone here me?" She received no answer, but went ahead regardless. "The attacking cozmozoans are going after the particles being produced by the planet's atmosphere, not the robots and machines on Alpha-12. Move Alpha-12 out of their way, and they might loose interest in it. If it's capable of any kind of independent movement, use it now. Is anyone receiving?"

She waited through dead silence for someone to answer her, but nothing happened. Either the communicator was useless, or nobody was listening. The only thing she could do now was somehow get back to Alpha-12 and find a way to switch its thrusters on with VIK's help. And that was only if it had any thrusters. She looked dispiritedly at the installation in the distance. Compensating for the wrecked shuttle's awkward spin while judging her speed and angle wouldn't be too difficult. The Zero-G chamber had taught her that. Making it there on time was another problem entirely.

One thing's for certain, she thought, getting ready to jump. The Bio Sensor won't be referred to as the B.S. anymore.

Suddenly, multiple points of bright light appeared on one side of Alpha-12. Even in the cold, desolate void of deep space, and after nearly being eaten by cozmozoan predators, her heart jumped. Very ponderously, the construction platform's orbit accelerated. She was careful not to celebrate too early, though; the rays could easily swerve to follow it. But so far, the ones that had been on site for a while were now bypassing it.

In high spirits, she waved to VIK. The demolition unit thought for a moment, then waved back ... and immediately found his arm clamped in the jaws of a Nebula Ray that swept up from under their vessel. "NO!" RUBY cried out as he was snatched away.

Twisting it its grasp, VIK yanked its arms free and started pumping blows into the creature while being carried away by it.

Then, abruptly, Gideon Alpha-12's rockets went dark. "What?" RUBY stared intently at the powerless superstructure, silently cursing it to start moving again while wondering what the malfunction could have been. Had the first wave of rays had reached the rockets' fuel cells and destroyed them? Disastrous possibilities ran through her mind until it occurred to her that her shout had been heard over the communication line. "No, you IDIOT! I wasn't shouting at you to stop! Turn your engines back on!" They lit back up and the installation continued moving.

TOM burst into the communications room, which turned out to be one of the transparent domes at the top of Alpha-12. The doors he entered through were thinner than the elevator doors, but he decided they were better than nothing. What did set his nerves on edge was the blanket of Nebula Rays crowding every square meter of the dome outside. Their mouths were squeezing open and shut, trying to suck in energy or chew through the glass. Whatever the walls of this place were made of, the glass was thankfully tougher stuff.

At the other side of the dome sat the comm station. He hobbled over to it, trying to ignore the gnawing, thrashing creatures all around him. The comm station resembled a set of heavy surround-sound speakers bolted to either end of a dais. There was a pair of circular discs on it's console that were used for adjusting to various communication frequencies. TOM took a seat, slapped on a giant pair of headphones, and began skillfully rotating the discs with his hands.

"Hey, this is Dee-Jay To—I mean, this is Tom, broadcasting on all channels from the Gideon Alpha-12 Construction Platform, and I need immediate help from anyone receiving. Repeat, I'm asking for immediate emergency help. The entire colony is under attack by, uh ... energy-sucking space-monsters. Man, that sounds weird now that I say it out loud. Occupants are fleeing in escape vessels, but ..."

The doors across from him shuddered and bent.

"... We need emergency assistance RIGHT NOW!"

TOM hopped down, discarded the headphones, and glanced about for a weapon as the rays continued their mindless ramming. Luckily, there had been plenty of construction and maintenance work going on all over the place. One section of the floor was only partially assembled, leaving bare girders exposed and piles of tools and materials stacked up. Sitting atop a pile of panel fixtures he spotted a welding tool. TOM hurried over and snatched it up. It was a plasma torch. Better than nothing. He set the device on its highest level and powered it up as the doors began tearing loose.

While he waited there, feeling the improvised weapon whirring with energy in his hands, recollections from earlier in the day flooded through his mind: the Hazard Logistics Gauntlet ... the Zero-G Dexterity Exam ... the Basic Computer Science Test ... They had all been designed to prepare him for handling the countless difficult situations he would deal with in his future. Even the unforeseen disasters, like almost being beaten up and incinerated, had left a lasting impact on him that would affect every serious decision he made from then on. "It looks like this is the final exam," he said aloud, bringing the plasma torch to bear as the steel doors burst open and the Nebula Rays moved in. "Well, I'm ready. Bring it on!"

The monsters obliged. The first ray attacked faster than TOM expected. He ducked and rolled, and the ray swooped over him. When he rose to his feet he was better prepared for the second. It was coming at him from a different angle. TOM swung the torch about and lit it up.

White-hot plasma stabbed out of its barrel and lanced through the creature. Its entire luminescent body simmered with all-consuming heat before the translucent flesh liquefied and dissipated into the air. TOM spun to see the first ray hurtling at him from behind. He fired the torch, and it vaporized into bright fluid just like its compadre. He glanced around, seeing no more enemies.

The fight had been quick, but relatively intense. Intense in the fact that it marked TOM's his first encounter where he hadn't survived by running. A ribbon of vapor poured from the barrel of the welding tool as it cooled down. He twirled the makeshift weapon around his finger, uttering in a singsong voice, "Yippie-ki-yay, muh—" The torch slipped from his finger and landed on his foot. "Dang it."

Abruptly remembering the situation outside, he scooped the torch up and turned back to the comm station to see if anyone had received his distress call. If not, he decided to keep sending and hope to get lucky. When he turned around, however, he saw that all the rays had cleared themselves off the dome for some reason, which allowed for an unobstructed view outside. And what he saw out there was a whole field of Nebula Rays rising up like a deadly tidal wave, with RUBY clinging to some useless chunk of metal directly in front of them.

"Really, now? I take care of one thing and ... AARGH!" Luck was definitely not a factor today.

Figuring out what had to be done, he immediately began searching the room for more tools. A utility cabinet provided what he needed, and he dashed back to where the observation dome met the floor. The power gauge on his plasma torch showed that it was nearly spent ... what else did he expect? He lowered the setting and got to work with it.

Impatience ate away at him while he carved out a vaguely circular shape in the glass. Finishing as quickly as possible, he swung with his three-fingered hand and punched the inside surface of the giant transparent dome. The part he struck blew out in an uneven circle, and its superheated edges immediately crystalized in the cold of space, sending out a corona of frozen shards.

With a short hop, he propelled himself through the hole, grabbing its edge and performing an awkward jackknife. The entire universe flip-flopped in his vision until his feet made contact with the outside surface of the dome. He attached his second tool to the glass, then straightened and inclined his head to stare at what was now upward for him.

More than one escaping shuttle had been smashed up, and as a result there was more than a few robots adrift in the void. The desire to rescue all of them was painfully extinguished when he realized it was an impossibility ... for the moment. He'd done all he could do for now, so the best thing left to do was save the person he cared about most. But he vowed to get to work on helping the rest of them as soon as RUBY was brought back.

Turning the nearly-depleted plasma torch up to its most powerful setting once again, he directed the output valve at his feet and poured out the last of it's fuel, launching himself up into the open.

It had been at least a minute since Gideon Alpha-12's rockets had fired up, and one thing had become obvious to RUBY: the installation would not be out of the way in time. Taking in the width of the swarm, their speed of approach, and the speed of the station's movement, it was clear that it would only have circumnavigated the planet by a tiny fraction by the time the second wave of rays arrived. She'd given them a reprieve from the first few predators, but that was all.

Something struck RUBY's floating island of sanctuary, knocking her out of her thoughts and into space. Recovering, she made a slow zero-gravity turn to see a ray tearing chunks out of the already destroyed escape shuttle. There would be no more communication, but that was fine. They were just as helpless to assist her just as she had been to assist them.

With nothing more urgent to keep her mind focused, the facts of her last few minutes of life began barging their way unwelcome into her head. They illustrated an no-win situation: her path of trajectory was currently planetward, but the second wave would catch up with her anyway, and even if they didn't she would still burn up in the atmosphere. If there was any way to survive that and also stay intact when turning into a meteorite, the rays would still catch up with her on the surface of the planet. And drifting out into the endless emptiness wasn't very appealing either ...

A feeling of doom settled in her stomach. She was so caught up in her dark thoughts that she almost didn't see the small white-and-blue figure that was hurtling toward her from the direction of the colony. Upon recognizing him, she did a double take. "Tom!"

"Miss me?" he quipped, easing to a stop via his retractable handheld winch. The end of the wire was obviously anchored somewhere on Alpha-12. "You didn't think I was gonna leave you out here, did you?"

"Where'd you get a winch?"

He nodded to it. "There're tools all over the place down there. Now hang on tight! We're goin' for a ride."

The two of them set their sights on the construction colony several hundred meters away. Several hundred meters of treacherous space to a salvation that already looked like swiss cheese ... and that salvation was temporary. But temporary or not, TOM secured his grip on the winch and RUBY secured hers on TOM. He hit the retract button and held it ...

... as a sharp fragment of shuttle wreckage drifted across their path, sliced into TOM's cable, and snapped cleanly through it. The remaining two meters of cable spooled up into the machine and began spinning around uselessly. The station wasn't even two meters closer. Neither of them said anything for a minute until TOM, sensing a need for dialog, tilted his head to look at RUBY. "I don't suppose you figured out a 'plan B' while mine was busy failing?"

She shook her head like a disappointed schoolteacher. "Your luck is rubbing off on me."

Something beyond her caught TOM's eye. "Ruby, uh ..."

"What now?" she asked.

He glanced again at the luminous creatures that glowed against the black abyss behind her. They looked like an entire fleet of alien stealth ships descending for an attack. Ships with teeth. "Look at me," he said. Even though he was sure she would see through his distraction immediately, he decided the last thing he could do for his friend was to keep her attention focused on him when their coup de grace came. "Keep your eyes on me," he repeated. "And don't look anywhere else."

"Look right at you," RUBY confirmed. "You mean, at your panoramic and very reflective face, in which I can see the big swarm of particle-draining monsters coming up behind me?"

"Uh ... yeah."

TOM released the severed end of his useless winch and RUBY took his free hand.

"Okay," she said.

Hanging in the middle of space, she stared at her reflection in TOM's optic visor. In his reinforced liquid-crystal visage, her image was tinted blue with stars and luminescent creatures spread out behind her.

TOM could see the same thing in hers, with a fuschia tint and a planet and space station behind him. But outside the reflection, behind RUBY's head, he could also see the wings of the first Nebula Ray in the second wave as it descended on them. He chose to ignore it. There was nothing he could do about it now, and it wasn't what he wanted to be looking at when their end came.

Suddenly, RUBY drew back in surprise as she watched TOM's reflective visor split into two halves by a blinding, vertical pinnacle of light. The ray behind her vanished inside an all-encompassing blast. She spun around to see what had happened, only to have what little was left of the ray splat her in the face.

While RUBY was struggling to wipe the slime away, TOM tilted his head back. "I can't believe it!" he exalted. "Somebody showed up!"

High above them a gigantic, gleaming starship was easing out of hyperspace. Its twin gun ports glowed vibrantly, having unleashed the beam that destroyed the Nebula Ray even before it had fully exited. The last few rainbow-colored strands of the hyperspace portal were still trailing away from its enormous engines.

The starship's weapons surged again, lancing through multiple Nebula Rays around Gideon Alpha-12 and among the shuttle wreckage. Sensing that their numbers were being diminished, the rays instinctively abandoned the hazardous food source. Next, the ship poured destructive particles straight downward, bisecting the second wave and creating a rift that would allow them to safely clear the free-floating survivors. The blazing salvo continued until, at last, the entire flotilla began to part. It was soon wide enough to pass around either side of the construction colony, which had shut off its engines.

That done, their rescuers finally ceased fire, and everyone waited and watched as the Nebula Rays continued to their destination, finishing their impossible interstellar journey.

The space around the pair of automatons had at last calmed from exploding ships, expiring robots, and hungry monsters to surviving robots aimlessly floating amongst scraps of debris. VIK drifted by, aiming a thumbs-up at them, and they each returned it with one hand. TOM let his head sink with relief until it tapped RUBY's chin. She let it rest there and patted his shoulder.

"Ruby?"

"What's up?"

"I got a look at my reflection in that dome overtop the communications room."

"Did you notice how good-looking you are?"

"Says the robot who looks exactly like me. But there's something else I wanna know ..." He raised his head and looked straight at her. "Why did you not tell me I have a scorch mark on my ass?"

concluded in chapter 0.5: "the end of the beginning"